The Internet is not free

Because you are happily browsing the Web, jumping from page to page, from video to video, you may have the impression that it’s a free ride. It is not.

After all, the Web and its digital contents are not much different from commercial hard copy printed magazines and newspapers. They all rely on advertising or sales of some kind to make a profit and be viable. We may be excused if sometimes we miss this point. It’s because ads on the Web are insidious — well, more or less. In many cases it’s not about direct advertising as much as it is about paying for subscriptions.

First of all there’s your Internet subscription of course. Whether it’s prepaid or billed; whether it’s 3G or 4G, ADSL or dedicated and leased lines, you are paying for it one way or another.

Then there are these countless “little” subscriptions here and there: news channels, music streaming, pro e-mail and domain name, software apps, etc. Whereas most basic formulas are free, you often have to pay to get the higher, supposedly better version. What may be deceiving is the fact that each subscription is usually a few dinars, often less than ten or even five.

Deezer streaming music service costs less than JD4 per month. LeFigaro French online newspaper is JD9 per month and Dropbox Cloud storage is JD7 per month (for a massive 1TB). Owning a domain name, such as myname.com for instance, on the Internet is about JD15 only for a whole year.

It’s when it all adds up that it starts hurting; understandably.

To entice the consumer many services start for free or offer a free-trial period, only to shift to a paid service afterwards. The same goes with the little software applications you download. You are first happy to have downloaded and installed a perfectly working free product. It then starts nagging you by displaying pop up messages that offer an “improved and professional” version for very little money.

And then of course you have these ubiquitous ads everywhere. You may not be paying for them directly, but this is business somehow, one way or another. We have to get used to and accept the fact that the space on the Web, however virtual it may be, is like the physical space on paper, on the screen at the movies or on TV, on a billboard on the street, or on the walls of a building: it will be used for commercials; there’s no escape.

You can find ad blocking software on the Web and that you can install, so that your Internet browser does not allow ads to bother you and spoil your viewing pleasure. It is fine, except for the fact that many sites just won’t open at all if they detect that their ads are being blocked. Back to square one!

The Web is not free and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Overall, it is money well spent. It’s a service and services usually don’t come free. After all no one said it was a government sponsored or subsidised service.